Full biographical accounts of the members of St John's College Oxford give much new evidence for academic life of the period. This volume comprises a register of all who were academically of St John's College, Oxford, from its foundation in 1555 until 1660, as well as of a number of men otherwise associated with it. It includes many figures of nationalimportance, among them William Laud, William Juxon, Edmund Campion, and Bulstrode Whitelocke, scholarly translators of the Bible, five future earls, and many Members of Parliament. The biographies, based on a very wide rangeof sources, amplify and correct existing work and identify many previously unknown St John's men. The introduction draws on this new research to provide a richer and more nuanced portrayal of an early-modern Oxford college than any so far attempted - and, since the College was both a Catholic Marian foundation and the institution in which Laud spend much of his life, makes a significant contribution to an understanding of the ramifications of early modernEnglish religious loyalties. The College's involvement in early academic drama in Oxford also receives special attention, as do its many Shakespearean connections (both family and Warwickshire affinity). An extensive Glossary provides essential supplementary guidance to the workings of the early-modern academic world. Andrew Hegarty gained his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford; his research is on the history of European universities in theearly modern period.

Tudor York

Richard Brome was the leading comic playwright of 1630s London. Starting his career as a manservant to Ben Jonson, he wrote a string of highly successful comedies which were influential in British theatre long after Brome's own playwriting career was cut short by the closure of the theatres in 1642.This book offers the first full-length chronological account of Brome's life and works, drawing on a wide range of recently rediscovered manuscript sources. Each of the surviving plays is discussed in relation to its social and political context, and its sense of place. A final chapter reviews Brome's enduring stageworthiness into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the most recent Brome revivals.

critical issues of early modern performance in fresh and vital ways. --

This collection of pamphlets describes fifteen English witchcraft cases in detail, vividly recreating events to give the reader the illusion of actually being present at witchcraft accusations, trials and hangings. But how much are we victims of literary manipulation by these texts? The pamphlets are presented in annotated format, to allow the reader to decide. Some of the texts appear in print for the first time in three centuries, whilst others are newly edited to give a clearer picture of sources.

Grattius' Cynegetica, a Roman didactic poem on hunting with dogs, is the author's only surviving work, though it reaches us now in an incomplete form. Thanks to a passing reference by Ovid in his Epistulae ex Ponto it can confidently be dated to the Augustan period, and yet while his literary contemporaries have been and continue to be subjects of academic scrutiny, Grattius is seldom read and remains almost completely unappreciated in classical and literary scholarship. This volume is the first book-length study of Grattius in English or any other language and sets out to rehabilitate the neglected poet by making him and his work accessible to a wide audience. Prefaced by an introduction to the poet and his work, as well as the Latin text of Cynegetica and a new English translation, it presents a broad collection of interpretive essays from an international team of scholars. These essays explore the poem within its literary, intellectual, and socio-political contexts and look forward to Grattius' (more charitable) posthumous reception in Europe in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. As a whole they aim to reveal his enduring relevance for the tradition of didactic poetry and the study of other Augustan poetry and culture, and to provide an impetus for future discussions.